Don’t fall in love with a job you don’t yet have

We’ve all been there: You’re searching for job and come across one that seems perfect. You have the experience the job requires, it’s at an organization you’d be thrilled to work for, and you’d be working on a cause you care about. So you craft a fantastic resume and cover letter, and send them in. You’re so certain you’d get this job, you don’t even bother applying to others.

Then you wait. And wait. And wait. And…nothing. Whereas with any other job, you would move on, you might feel especially upset that you didn’t even get a call back from this one, making you feel discouraged and demotivated.

Over on LinkedIn, career coach J.T. O’Donnell calls this a “job crush.” A job crush is when, “You fall in love with a potential employer, causing you to be unable to pursue any other open positions.” As a result of ignoring other options, you’ve prolonged your job search, in addition to dealing with the heartbreak of not landing the job you wanted. To cope with job crush, she outlines four strategies. Here are are two that stood out to us:

Always Assume You Didn’t Get the Job

As a job seeker, you are a business-of-one trying to sell your services to an employer. You should expect to have a lot of competition. Good salespeople never assume they have the sale in the bag. In fact, they assume they don’t have a deal as a way to motivate them to seek as many new prospects as they can. Reminder yourself repeatedly that you must play the numbers. The more potential employers you have, the better your chances you’ll close one.

Create a Bucket List to Keep Things in Perspective

The fastest way to take your job crush down off the employment pedestal you’ve put it on is to create a list of ten other companies you’d rather work for. There are plenty of fish in the sea. You just need to spend some time fishing! Create a list of employers you admire and focus on what makes them great. You’ll quickly find yourself putting your job crush into perspective. Companies aren’t soul mates. In fact, every job is temporary. A bucket list will help you keep that in mind. Not to mention, it will give you a list you can use to focus your job search.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with being excited about a job and letting that excitement show. The key is to realize that unless you have been offered a job, you’re still looking for a new opportunity.

Here are a few other tips for staying positive during the job search and combating job crush: